


Grey

by smokyphan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Violence, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 14:58:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3253973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokyphan/pseuds/smokyphan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I feel bad for the soulmates separated by a war"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grey

Phil Lester had grown up surrounded by the myth of the colours. It was told for bedtime stories, discussed across the dinner table, whispered about in corners of the school yard. True love- your soulmate- would bring you your colours, and open the world up for you.  
When he was 12, Phil witnessed his best friend find his colours. The year was 1930, and school had just finished for the summer. He and his friend had been racing home along the familiarly grimy, dark grey terraces of working class Manchester, when Michael had run smack into a girl. She was small- probably aged around 8 or 9, and had long, ringlety curls cascading down her back, appearing in Phil’s monochromatic world to be pure white, almost translucent. But what struck Phil most about the scene was the look of pure awe, absolute wonderment, painted onto the faces of both Michael and the girl. He would later discover that the girl’s name was Shirley, and that her family had recently moved to the area after her father lost his job in a factory down in Bristol, and that her and Michael provided each other with a pure sense of contentment and happiness, and that 8 years later he would happily be a witness at their wedding.  
Phil had asked Michael about the colours shortly after Shirley burst into his life; what it felt like to find them, what they looked like, how different the world was once you had them. Michael had explained how everything became brighter, instantly more beautiful. The world was exquisite, and finding your soulmate revealed all the possibilities to you.  
Phil had many a childhood memory of the long, bitterly cold winter nights huddled around the fire with his siblings, listening to his grandmother tell the story of finding her colours, and how his grandpa had brought light and love and life to her world. Things were bleak in his working class, northern English neighbourhood but stories such as thing and the hope of something better to come kept Phil and his family going.  
Phil left school at 13, and started work in a textiles factory immediately afterwards, proud to be able to contribute what little he could to his family’s pocket. The monotony of his work just seemed to add to the grey, grey, grey of his world, but Phil still had the stories of the colours to cling onto, to keep him going through longs days at the factory and long sleepless nights worrying about money. This period of repetitious waiting seemed to carry on almost infinitely, and Phil still lived in hope of one day finding love and finding his colours.  
Then the war broke out.  
Phil was 21, and had long since moved out of his family’s small terraced house and was renting a room of his own on the same road with his scare earnings from the factory. He heard of the outbreak on a staticy radio in the kitchen of his old family home, and by the time the next month rolled around Phil was enlisted to the army and ready to start his training. He was sent to a training camp on Salisbury plain, and by April 1940 Phil was watching the White cliffs of Dover disappear over the grey horizon with a possible one way ticket to German-occupied France.  
The trenches were bleak, but Phil was bleaker. Thoughts and hopes of finding his colours had all but disappeared. The war was slowly sucking the life out of him, taking his comrades and bringing nothing but fleas and freezing mud in their place. After 7 long months in the trenches and on the front line, Phil’s already grey world had just become greyer.  
Tonight they were making a push at taking the first few trenches of the German front line. Phil and his battalion would run across no-man’s in a static hail of gunfire, climb through the barbed wire and the jump down into the German trenches. Phil was aware that if he made it into the other trench he would have to murder any German he saw on sight, and the thought of this still made him feel sick to the stomach despite the number of times he had been forced into doing this over the past few months. And that’s what it was- murder, pure murder, despite the pretence of “war”.  
Night fell, and Phil was crouched down and pressed against the wall of the trench, breathing shallowly and listening for the Sergeant’s signal to leap up and run.  
The whistle blew.  
Phil clambered over the trench, and ran for his life.  
The bullets were raining down, and he was vaguely aware of men falling in his peripheral vision, but he just kept running, running, running, until he reached the barbed wire. Crouching down, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of wire cutters, quickly cutting through and crawling the last few metres to the German trench.  
Dagger ready in his hand, he dropped down into the trench, only to be greeted directly by the feet of a German soldier.  
Phil just had time to read the name-tag of the soldier “Howell”, before the world burst into bright light.

Colour.


End file.
